Mick Hartley

Darfur Update

The Scotsman brings us up to date on the twists and turns relating to Darfur:

Sudan is dragging its feet over co-operating with Darfur war crimes investigations, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) told the United Nations yesterday.

Luis Moreno Ocampo said Sudan has not yet issued him with a visa to investigate killings and butchery that have left 180,000 dead and two million homeless.

What's not clear is why on earth they should expect Sudan to cooperate, given that the regime in Khartoum is largely responsible for the genocide.

The ethnic cleansing of the Darfur region of southern Sudan is one of the worst war crimes of recent years and is set to be a major test of will for the UN.

For the first time it has linked up with the ICC for a war crimes prosecution. But this came in the teeth of opposition from the US, which opposes the ICC and has refused to recognise its stated aim of being the world's first permanent international war crimes court.

The UN agreed the ICC should do the prosecution in April only after a last-minute deal, part-brokered by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, which saw Americans given immunity from prosecution. A dossier with 51 names, yet to be made public, has already been given to Mr Ocampo by the UN, and is believed to target some of the top names in Sudan's army.

With dozens of convictions of top generals and politicians under its belt in war crimes trials for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the UN is confident that it has the legal precedents to try Sudanese officials.

However, human rights activists fear that if, as seems likely, top Sudanese officials including the president are indicted for war crimes, Sudan will stop co-operating.

In the case of Bosnia, the UN has used commandos to arrest main suspects and economic threats to persuade key figures, such as Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president, to come forward.

But the Security Council is deeply divided and human rights officials fear it lacks the will for the kind of arm-twisting that may be needed to get Sudan to surrender senior leaders.

So, the politicians have certainly been busy. Will the ICC succeed in the teeth of Security Council dithering? We'll have to wait and see. Meanwhile there's a small point which it's easy to lose sight of. It creeps in at the bottom of the article:

Another problem for Mr Ocampo's investigators is that the war in Sudan rumbles on, despite ongoing peace talks.

Ah yes, the war. You can see how it would be a problem for Mr Ocampo's investigators. Bit of a problem too for the people still being killed and raped, nevermind living under the imminent threat of starvation.

Burqas and Hijabs

Will Hutton got into trouble last week for his comment that he found the hijab offensive, on the grounds that it signified women's subservient status in Islam. There was one letter from an eager Muslim convert:

Since I became a Muslim nearly four years ago, I feel valued, respected and empowered as a woman, and protected by my hijab. In Islam women are held in high esteem.

Ah yes. But in general I agree with his critics. I have no problem with the hijab, or with Sikhs' turbans, or Rastas' red gold and green woolly hats, or Hasidic Jews with their locks, hats, and glasses (is it all that poring over the Talmud that makes glasses practically universal among male Hasidics?).

Having just queued up in Tesco's in front of a woman dressed in a burqa - the business with the slit for eyes - I have to say though that, yes, that is something I find offensive. It's not so much the implication of women's subservience, though that's there of course, but the covering up of the face. There's something about an open society that it works when everyone in a social setting - in the street, shopping - has their face visible; a sort of democracy of social interaction. It offends me when people don't respect that.

From the Mullahs to the Military

The election of a man like Ahamadinejad, willing to exploit the unpopularity of the Mullahs, was a smart move by Khamenei but marks a shift of power to the military, argues Amir Taheri:

There are many ways to interpret the surprise victory of Mahmoud Ahamadinejad, who becomes the sixth president of the Islamic Republic. But one thing is certain: It marks a shift of power within the Khomeinist regime from the mullahs to the military. This is the first time that a mullah, in this case the most prominent of all political mullahs, has been defeated by a virtually unknown nonmullah in a high-profile election.

The defeat of the mullahs is illustrated by other facts as well. All the self-styled grand ayatollahs of Qom endorsed Mr. Rafsanjani, as did both rival wings of the Society of Combatant Clergy. This vast coalition, ranging from Mossadeqists to Tudeh Communists and so-called "religious nationalists" that had helped Khomeini to power in 1979, also campaigned for Mr. Rafsanjani.

Mr. Ahamadinejad exploited the antimullah feeling without any qualms. He spoke of "16 years of decline, despotism and theft." And no one needed reminding that in those 16 years Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been the "Supreme Guide" while two mullahs, Mr. Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, had held the presidency for eight years each.

Mr. Ahamadinejad's victory marks the ascendancy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the half-dozen paramilitary organizations related to it. A regime whose elite has been discredited as a result of years of misrule is forced to bring its military to the fore to meet the political challenges ahead.

What is happening in Iran today has numerous precedents in Islamic history. Many regimes based on religion ended up making a Faustian pact with their military for protection against the people. And in every case the military, once in power, eliminated its masters. Islamic history knows such military rulers as the "mamelukes" -- literally, "the owned ones," individuals who were supposed to serve the caliph but ended up chopping off his head and seizing power for themselves.

There is no doubt that Mr. Ahamadinejad, and beyond him the military elite of the regime, owe their victory to Ayatollah Khamenei, who broke with his fellow mullahs to help the military win the struggle within the regime. Theoretically, Ayatollah Khamenei now controls all the levers of power in the establishment. In reality, however, he is a lone mullah who will be increasingly opposed by the clergy for different reasons. At the same time, because he lacks a popular base of his own, he will in time become a hostage to the new "mamelukes" symbolized by Mr. Ahamadinejad. [...]

Political mullahs like Messrs. Khatami and Rafsanjani tried to deceive Europeans, and often succeeded, by pretending to be Davos-style liberals abroad while telling women at home to cover their hair because it emanates a dangerous ray that makes men wild. With Mr. Ahamadinejad, however, you'll get what you see. Unlike Mr. Khatami, who claimed that Islam was the same thing as democracy, Mr. Ahamadinejad has no qualms about saying that the two are incompatible. He is also open about his belief that women are not the equal of men and that non-Muslims cannot have equal rights with Muslims.

Messrs. Khatami and Rafsanjani tried to present to the Western world an "other" that was really the same bar the beard and the turban. Mr. Ahamadinejad, however, is proud of acting as the "other" that can never abandon its otherness.

Putin's Ring

I love this story: a guy shows Putin his diamond-studded gold ring, and Putin pockets it.

At a press conference, Mr Kraft, who made his fortune in paper products, is said to have been urged by Sanford Weill, the chairman of Citigroup, to show Mr Putin his flashy 2005 Super Bowl ring. The 14-carat white-gold ring, awarded to all members of the winning team, weighs more than four ounces, making it the heaviest so far, and is studded with 124 diamonds arranged to form the team ’s logo and the words “World Champions”.

When Mr Kraft presented the Super Bowl rings to his team two weeks ago, the club boasted: “These rings pack plenty of bling.”

The rings are also avidly sought by collectors. A less lavish Super Bowl ring previously owned by a member of the San Francisco 49ers sold on eBay last year for $49,000 (£27,000)....

The New York Sun reported that Mr Kraft did not intend to give Mr Putin the ring and was trying quietly to retrieve it.

Best of all is the statement put out by Kraft:

“At the end of a very productive three-hour business meeting with President Putin, organised by my good friend Sandy Weill, I showed the president my most recent Super Bowl ring,” Mr Kraft said.

“Upon seeing the ring, President Putin, a great and knowledgeable sports fan, was clearly taken with its uniqueness. At that point, I decided to give him the ring as a symbol of the respect and admiration that I have for the Russian people and the leadership of President Putin. It was truly an act of serendipity and one that I am honoured to have experienced. It touched me to see President Putin’s reaction to the ring.”

I bet it did.

Personality Disorders

After the prosecution accepted a plea of diminished responsibility on behalf of parent-killer Brian Blackwell, on the grounds that he suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Oliver James helpfully provides some guidelines to help identify this horrifying new syndrome:

That Brian Blackwell should have been diagnosed as suffering from a personality disorder is not surprising.

Eighty per cent of all convicted prisoners do, and 74 per cent have more than one. More intriguing is that the narcissistic variant has been diagnosed, which could explain a propensity for violence.

To qualify as pathologically narcissistic the psychiatrist's bible requires that you have five or more of these characteristics: a grandiose sense of self-importance; preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love; believe you are special and can only be understood by similar special people; excessive demands for admiration from others; unreasonable sense of entitlements; exploitative of others; lack of empathy; often envious of others or believe they envy you; and arrogant or haughty.

It's certainly shocking that 74% of all prisoners have more than one personality disorder. How many, I wonder, have more than two? 47%? 34.3%? I hope someone's doing some research on this. And if they know these people have these personality disorders, why on earth don't they lock them up before they commit a crime?

There's a whole world of personality disorders out there. Extreme Aggressive Personality Disorder manifests itself through acts of violence against third parties; Wealth Envy Personality Disorder through uncontrollable feelings of jealousy when the sufferer is confronted with the fact that others are richer than them. Combine these with Low Property Respect Personality Disorder and you have a potentially explosive combination where the victims feel compelled to go round violently robbing people of the objects without which they feel their lives to be worthless.

It's not just in prisons either. Thousands are wandering around untreated with Unpleasant Personality Disorder. And then there's Therapeutic Diagnoses Personality Disorder, rampant in the psychiatric profession.

Compacted Narcissism

Apropos of James Lileks' comments on Woody Allen (via Norm), I have two comments:

First, I proudly present the last paragraph of a letter I had published in the LRB some years back, on the subject of psychoanalysis (I don't remember what I was writing in response to):

What comes through clearly when you study Freud, amusingly for someone supposed to have probed more deeply into the human mind than any other thinker, is his remarkable lack of self-awareness. What about his grotesque decision to psychoanalyse his own daughter, the hapless Anna? I'm reminded of Woody Allen, who took as his lover a girl to whom he'd been a father, and failed to see what all the fuss was about. It takes years of psychoanalysis to get that obtuse.

And second, I saw the man himself last Thursday evening in Belgrave Square. He was standing on a corner with a couple of women, one I'm sure his young wife, looking like he was sizing up shots for his next movie.

Just thought you'd be interested....

Sophiatown

BBC4 had a documentary last night about Sophiatown, in Johannesburg, South Africa's Harlem 40 to 50 years ago. Much of it centred on interviews with some of the old musicians associated with the place, like Dollar Brand, the Manhattan Brothers, and Dolly Rathebe. From this interview, it's clear that Pascale Lamche, the director, is hoping for a "Buena Vista Social Club" effect, whereby these old performers will see some recognition in their twilight years. Well, let's hope so, but the Cuban musicians like Ruben Gonzalez were still, in their eighties, playing with a strength and vitality that the South Africans, to judge from the clips we saw, have largely lost. They were pretty much going through the motions. Still, there's a point there: South Africa's musical culture has always been vibrant, and was, until the recent rise of World Music, perhaps the only one in Africa which had an influence outside the continent. There's Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight), Miriam Makeba with her Click Song, the penny whistle (Kwela) of Tom Hart....

There's a useful history of South African music here.

For me there were three main entry points to the music. First township jazz: South Africa uniquely developed its own jazz culture, with musicians like Dollar Brand, Hugh Masakela, Bheki Mseleku, most of whom were forced into exile. The Blue Notes (Chris MacGregor, Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo) relocated in London, put on a great show at a time when a lot of jazz tended towards the over-cerebral, and were hugely influential.

Then there was the series put out by Earthworks (associated with London's great African music shop Stern's), "The Indestructible Beat of Soweto", introducing Mbaqanga, hard-driving urban sounds, with undoubted stars Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens (who put on one of my all-time best concerts at the Forum in London).

Finally there was the Zulu choral tradition, Iscathamiya. I confess I'm not a great fan of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, but I have a memory of a quite extraordinary TV programme back in the Eighties, whose name I've forgotten, which featured the efforts of migrant workers, living in squalid dormitories hundreds of miles from their homelands and families, to organise a competition between different choirs. To ensure impartiality the judge was picked from outside: a poor white drunk who was paid in booze and who looked totally bemused by the whole affair. It lasted all night, and the prize if I remember right was a chicken. I was inspired to search out this (no longer available) album. The Easy Walkers version of Mbube (Lion Sleeps Tonight), recorded at Glebelands Hostel, is a wonder.

The music world is, we're constantly told, awaiting the next big thing. It's assumed, of course, that it'll come from the West, but maybe it won't. Maybe, like reggae, a new music will appear in some urban centre in....well, what about South Africa? They're constantly taking American music and making something new. Kwaito is the latest thing - a hybrid of House music and Rap, but unmistakeably South African. There's not much chance though - Africa for Western musicians is just another market, whether for our music, or for our charity.

Good News, Bad News

From Pakistan:

A Pakistani gang-rape victim won an important victory yesterday when the Supreme Court ordered that 13 men who had been acquitted for their alleged involvement in the crime be rearrested.
Mukhtaran Mai, 33, a schoolteacher from the Punjab, was raped on the orders of an illegal tribal council in May 2002 after members of a rival clan accused her teenage brother of having an affair with a higher-caste woman.

Six men received death penalties for their alleged roles in the rape after Miss Mai defied local custom and testified against them. Her bravery won international acclaim and the case served to highlight the mistreatment of women in rural Pakistan.

However, in March a lower court acquitted five of the alleged rapists and commuted the death sentence of another to life in prison. Eight others, most of them members of the village council that ordered the rape, had already been acquitted.

But yesterday the Supreme Court overturned the previous rulings. It said that possible punishments for the men would be considered at a future hearing.

Scores of supporters congratulated Miss Mai outside the courtroom. “I am happy and hope that those who humiliated me will be punished,” she said.

Her fight against repressive feudal justice has won her praise at home and abroad. Miss Mai, from Pakistan’s most backward region, has become a symbol of the struggle of women in a country where hundreds are raped and killed every year in so-called honour attacks, many perpetrated by the victims’ own families.

Her legal victory came a day after the Government returned her passport and lifted travel restrictions imposed on her. The case had acquired a political dimension last week when she was stopped from visiting the United States on the instruction of President Musharraf.

From India:

India's leading Muslim legal body has ordered a mother of five to separate from her husband and leave her village and children after she was allegedly raped by her father-in-law.

Imrana Ilahi, 28, alleges that she was raped by Mohammed Ali, 60, at her in-laws’ home in rural Uttar Pradesh while her husband was away. The village council ruled that she should divorce her husband, give up her children, who are aged seven to two, and become her father-in-law’s second wife.

Local clerics backed the ruling, sparking a storm of protest. Mrs Ilahi appealed to the All India Muslim Personal Law Board after it condemned the decision. The board ruled on Monday that, although Mrs Ilahi should not have to marry her alleged attacker, she must be divorced from her husband and return to her parents’ village. Further, her husband should be given custody of their children.

“Imrana’s conjugal relationship with her husband stood dissolved since she had been raped by the latter’s blood relative,” Begum Naseem Iqtader Ali, the lone female member of the board, said.Mrs Ilahi’s children remain at her in-laws’ home.

“Let the mullahs look after my children,” she said.

Pakistan's Daily Times has more on the thinking behind the decision:

“According to the Holy Quran, Imrana’s conjugal relationship with her husband stood dissolved since she has been raped by the latter’s blood relative,” the board’s woman member Begum Naseem Iqtedar Ali told reporters here. “Had she been raped by anyone other than a blood relation, she could have stayed with her husband ... but here a sacred relationship had been violated, the consequences of which have to be borne by Imrana and her husband Noor Ilahi,” she said. But Imrana could remarry if she wanted to, she added.

Why the consequences could not have been borne by the rapist isn't entirely clear.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

You don't need to be a follower of Thomas Szasz to have trouble with this:

A public schoolboy who bludgeoned his elderly parents to death before taking his girlfriend on a spending spree in the United States pleaded guilty today their manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility.

Brian Blackwell, 19, is believed to be the first person in the UK to use a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) to escape a charge of murder.

Blackwell used a claw hammer and a kitchen knife to kill his parents in July last year. The bloodstained bodies of 72-year-old Sidney Brian Blackwell, a retired accountant, and his wife Jacqueline, 61, an antiques dealer, lay undiscovered at their bungalow in the affluent village of Melling, near Aintree racecourse in Merseyside, until September 5 when a neighbour noticed a bad smell.

Meanwhile their son, a fantasist and a compulsive liar, had gone on holiday to America with his girlfriend Amal Saba, where he embarked on a £30,000 spending spree, including £2,200 on a three-night stay in the Presidential Suite of the Plaza Hotel in New York.

After his guilty plea today, Liverpool Crown Court heard how Blackwell, a straight-A student described as "exemplary" by his former teachers, suffered from NPD, a clinically recognised mental illness.

The disorder made Blackwell obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, power and brilliance. He created a web of lies about his life, including claiming he was a professional tennis player, and funded his fantasies by applying for 13 credit cards in his father’s name. [...]

He was charged with murder and was due to stand trial earlier this week. However, prosecutors dropped the charge and accepted his guilty plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility after a team of five experts reached a diagnosis of NPD.

It can't be long before murderers plead reduced responsibility on the grounds that they're psychopaths.

Colouring Maps

You can't please all the people...

China is (again) angry with Japan:

The latest incident in the troubled relationship between the two neighbours flared up yesterday when it emerged that books on their way by mail to a Japanese school in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian had been seized by customs authorities.

This is the first time that China has interfered with books or lessons at Japanese schools within its borders, and inflames the arguments over Japan’s attitudes to its wartime past. A Japanese Cabinet insider told The Times that the seizure was “provocative and probably illegal”.

The books were confiscated because a page showing a map of Asia had the island of Taiwan coloured differently from mainland China — a widespread convention of international cartography to which China takes great offence.

China regards Taiwan as part of its territory, despite the island’s split from the mainland after a civil war in 1949. Beijing refers to Taiwan as awaiting reunification. Japan maintains unofficial ties with Taiwan.

The Japanese school, which has since recovered almost all of the books, was ordered by the local Dalian customs office to pay a fine of about £50. Mitsuru Ebihara, the school’s deputy headmaster, said that the fine would be paid, but the incident has caused anger in Tokyo, where officials are demanding an explanation.

But (via Japundit) Taiwan is getting in on the act:

A map of China showing Taiwan as a part of the PRC has enraged the Government Information Office (GIO), with Minister Pasuya Yao yesterday demanding a correction from publisher Time magazine.

"What the magazine did on the map may confuse our foreign friends and make them believe that Taiwan is a part of China, which is very inaccurate," Yao said.

"We have forwarded letters to the magazine's headquarters in New York and its branch office in Hong Kong and told them that Taiwan is not a part of China," Yao added.

According to Yao, in Time's latest issue, a story on China's economic development used a map which included China and Taiwan in the report. While China's neighboring countries were all labeled in white, Taiwan was labeled beige, the same color as China, which might lead readers to believe that Taiwan was a part of China's territory.